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Jubalt: 1. On Trollus and Cressida, vom Realschullehrer Dr. Böning.
2. Schulnachrichten, vom Director.

Bromberg, 1861.

Buchdruckerei von f. fischer.

Ni. addy

d. 1.

JOTHE

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19

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Troilus and Cressida.

If, about to write an essay on a Shaksperean drama

as a proem to the annual account of our public school, I almost may fear to carry coals to Newcastle. since there have been made so many sound, critical and philosophical examinations about this poet's plays as to make every further attempt to this end, a little gratifying undertaking; yet this very drama takes, methinks, so singular a place, as well in the series of Shakspere's plays as in the literature of the drama, and those treatises I mentioned, are chiefly relative to the brighter stars in the circle of his poetical productions: that from this point of view I ventured to treat this drama somewhat amplier than I found it done with any English or German commentator. As to the time of the origin of Troilus and Cressida, with great accord and still greater probability, 1609 has been assumed as the year of its first public representation on the stage. *) Neither are there different opinions about the foundation of the play since, evidently, Chaucer's epic poem Troilus and Creseide has supplied the main materials to the poet who, besides, found many accessory helps in the Troye Boke of Lydgate, Caxton's History of the Destruction of Troy and Chapman's version of Homer. The difficulties, and there are a great many of them, which present themselves to the examinator, are referable to the ethic and dramatical character of this play. Indeed, the first English editors did not know how to classify it. In the first quarto - edition of 1608 it is called a famous History, in the title-page; but in the preface, it is repeatedly mentioned as a Comedy. In the folio-edition of 1623, it bears the title of the Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida, and was intended to follow Romeo and Juliet. But the editors found that this extraordinary drama was neither a Comedy, nor History,

*) cf. Collier's Shakspeare VI., 5. Charles Knight, Shakespear's Illustrated Works II., 3. Nic. Delius, Shakspere's Werke II., preface to Troilus and Cressida, p. II.

nor Tragedy, and they, therefore, placed it between the Histories and Tragedies, leaving to the reader to make his own classification. *)

So we find it alternately, both by English and German commentators, called a comedy, tragedy, historical-piece. N. Delius takes it to be a tragycomedy.

Corresponding with those heterogeneous denominations, the views of the literary value set on this play, show no greater congruity. Among the English, it is, above all, Knight and Coleridge who go farthest in their eulogies of this dramatical production; the former writes: In no play does he appear to us to have a more complete mastery over his materials, or to mould them into more plastic shapes by the force of his most surpassing imagination. The great Homeric poem, the rude romance of the destruction of Troy, the beautiful elaboration of that romance by Chaucer, are all subjected to his wondrous alchemy; and new forms and combinations are called forth so lifelike, that all the representations which have preceded them, look cold and rigid statues, not warm and breathing men and women". -- Coleridge thinks it a grand historypiece in the robust style of Albrecht Dürer, intended to translate the poetic heroes of Paganism into the not less rude, but more intellectually vigorous, and more featurely warriors of Christian chivalry, and to substantiate the distinct and graceful profiles or outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh und blood of the romantic drama. These rather extravagant theories of Shakspere's main object in his drama, which are based, after my belief, on that enthusiastical commendation with which the first quarto-edition was set forth Eternal reader etc. -, have been followed by Tieck and Ulrici who, moreover, vindicates to the poet the far higher standpoint of a christian moralist, while Gervinus, putting the love-tale of Troilus and Cressida into the centre of the plot, finds but comical elements in the whole. In order not to be left to probability and conjecture, as to Shakspere's ruling principle in this drama, I shall try to consider it with regard to its single scenes and characters the analyzation of which, I suppose, may best give us the necessary means to judge rightly of the poet's scope.

Act I., 1 **) Troilus owns his love to Pandar, in the most exaggerated

*) Knight, preface to Troilus and Cressida.

**) Shakspere's Werke, herausgegeben und erklärt von Dr. Nicolaus Delius. Elberfeld 1855. B. II.,,Troilus and Cressida" p. 12.

terms.,,I am weaker, he says, than a woman's tear, tamer than sleep fonder than ignorance etc. Pandar, hinting at his niece's leaving Troy, and following her father Calchas to the grecian camp, stimulates the poor lover still more and drives him almost to despair. His love is that fantastical passion of a pubescent youth, full of a violent sensuality and an overflowing of feeling, joined with the desire to signalize himself in deeds of heroism. cf. IV., 5*) The youngest son of Priam" etc. In Cressida he owns having found the long desired-for ideal of his soul; mad in her love, he idealizes her eyes, her hair, cheek, voice; in comparison with her hand, all whites are ink, to its soft seizure the cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of sense hard as the palm of ploughmen. Besides, he thinks her stubborn-chaste against all suit; and in a most beautiful manner, worthy of a better object of his love, he allegorizes himself and his mistress:

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Her bed is India, there she lies, a pearl:
Between our Ilium and where she resides
Let it be call'd the wild and wandering flood,
Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar
Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.

Roused from his amorous dreams, by Aeneas, whose report of Paris' being hurt in the battle, by Menelaus, gives only rise to his witty but indecent observation: Let Paris bleed etc.: he follows the Trojan leader to the field of battle. Curious to make the acquaintance of Cressida, the chaste pearl of India, we feel highly disappointed in our expectations, when finding this ideal beauty and chastity to be nothing but a sharp and cunning woman whose language wittily plays with shallow and equivocal expressions without any profoundness: a mere coquet of the lowest rank. Thus the poet has painted her portrait I., 2.,**) as such a one she appears in the dialogue with her uncle Pandar whose character, as that of a confounded pimp, is drawn with eminent art. Both are looking at the Trojan warriors as they are returning home from the field; Pandar slily trying to extol Troilus' virtues in comparison with those of any Trojan hero; even Hector comes short of him in bodily strength, beauty and bravery; Helena is fond of him; parallelled to him: the eagle: all other heroes are crows and dows.,,I do not understand,

*) p. 97. **) p. 18 ff.

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